Wednesday, April 13, 2011

GOP Sellout in the Budget Bill (and the NRA won't even criticize it.)

Gun-control advocates won a rare victory this past Friday when congressional negotiators removed a provision from the final budget deal that would have made it much harder for the government to regulate firearm sales along the Mexico border.

The amendment, offered by Reps. Dan Boren (D-Okla.) and Denny Rehberg (R-Mont.), would have prevented federal funds from being used by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF) to track bulk sales of long guns in southwestern states. Up until late moments in the negotiations, sources familiar with the discussions say, it remained in the text of the final continuing resolution.

But sometime before the final deal was announced on Friday night, lawmakers stripped the rider from the bill. The move came after concerned lawmakers and even Mexico's Ambassador to the United States lobbied congressional leadership and the White House to strip the language from the bill.

"ATF is already chronically underfunded and has been without a confirmed director since 2006 as a result of inaction by past sessions of Congress," New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, a co-chair of the coalition Mayors Against Illegal Guns, said in a statement. "We welcome this sign that leaders in Washington may be ready to step up and help law enforcement save lives."

Privately, gun-control advocates acknowledge that the simple removal of the Boren-Rehberg Amendment was a minor victory. To wildly cheer such a development could give off the impression of that longer-term objectives are hopelessly unreachable.

Yet, as one operative in the gun control community notes, "it's hard to recall the last time the NRA didn't get a priority," which the Boren-Rehberg Amendment was. And the amendment's defenders were notably silent after it was stripped from the final budget deal.

NRA spokesman Andrew Arulanandam said the gun-rights lobby did not put out a statement on the rider being stripped. Rehberg's office did not have a statement either. A call to Boren's office was not immediately returned.

Ask yourself this question: what is it about ATF funding in general -- and the Boren-Rehberg amendment in particular -- that is so important to the Democrats?

Here's another: Why is "sellout" the default position for the GOP?

And why is silence the order of the day for the NRA when their poltical allies decide to sell out the Second Amendment?

This has been another drive-by on your liberties by the NRA weinermobile.

8 comments:

Anonymous
said...

Well, I'll take a stab at it.

There maybe circumstances wherein certain members of the DC branch of the Gang Of Puss*es, have discovered that they are now owned by persons who have "sensitive" information, which might cause them personal and legal problems. (this could only happen in a socialist country I'm told, or one converting to that "system")

Those who hold said information have to be careful how they use it but if done correctly, very important votes would be won, by the smallest of margins, when it truly counted, thus husbanding a scarce and reliable resource, for the future.

Using roughly the same format, much dirty or "wet" work could be accomplished. Imagine the volume of information available to the media, who's "job" it is to dig it up and imagine that said media were to conspire, with a national political party that calls it's self one name, when in actual fact they wholly represent the latest incarnation of communist revolutionaries.

How's that for theory.

The commies, Soviet bloc and others, used this format for decades.

Oh yeah. I'm told that it couldn't happen here even though evidence is readily available to prove otherwise.

"Ask yourself this question: what is it about ATF funding in general -- and the Boren-Rehberg amendment in particular -- that is so important to the Democrats?"Because without a reasonably functional and well funded ATF, they will not have a usable means to round up the guns when they have the rest of their ducks lined up.

"Here's another: Why is "sellout" the default position for the GOP?"Because they are carrying neuticles in their scrota in place of the real things. Neuticles are testicular implants for pets. Neuticles allows a pet to retain his natural look, self esteem and aids in the trauma associated with altering. "With Neuticles it's like nothing ever changed"

When they start doing multiple long gun monitoring (more than they've been doing anyway in a roundabout way when they do compliance checks on bound books) maybe I'll move to Mexico and see what kind of multiple purchase for resale deals my local SAC can get me. Could be lucrative. Don't rain on my parade, guys.

I have news for you. The NRA is politically a single-issue organization. It is NOT the NRA's job to critique (look it up) a budget!By the way Hoss, the NRA has protected our right to possess and carry guns a helluvalot more than we 3 percenters have, so far. The NRA has a lot more political clout than any other gun owners' organization, and we all would do well to support it. By the way, "Anonymous" is no more unidentified than any of you who use a made-up name! GROW UP! They are not perfect, but you are doing no good in the political fight by not fully supporting the NRA!

"Progress made under the shadow of the policeman's club is false progress."

I believe that liberty is the only genuinely valuable thing that men have invented, at least in the field of government, in a thousand years. I believe that it is better to be free than to be not free, even when the former is dangerous and the latter safe. I believe that the finest qualities of man can flourish only in free air – that progress made under the shadow of the policeman's club is false progress, and of no permanent value. I believe that any man who takes the liberty of another into his keeping is bound to become a tyrant, and that any man who yields up his liberty, in however slight the measure, is bound to become a slave. -- H.L. Mencken

On the efficacy of passive resistance in the face of the collectivist beast. . .

Had the Japanese got as far as India, Gandhi's theories of "passive resistance" would have floated down the Ganges River with his bayoneted, beheaded carcass. -- Mike Vanderboegh.

In the future . . .

When the histories are written, “National Rifle Association” will be cross-referenced with “Judenrat.” -- Mike Vanderboegh to Sebastian at "Snowflakes in Hell"

"Smash the bloody mirror."

If you find yourself through the looking glass, where the verities of the world you knew and loved no longer apply, there is only one thing to do. Knock the Red Queen on her ass, turn around, and smash the bloody mirror. -- Mike Vanderboegh

From Kurt Hoffman over at Armed and Safe.

"I believe that being despised by the despicable is as good as being admired by the admirable."

From long experience myself, I can only say, "You betcha."

"Only cowards dare cringe."

The fears of man are many. He fears the shadow of death and the closed doors of the future. He is afraid for his friends and for his sons and of the specter of tomorrow. All his life's journey he walks in the lonely corridors of his controlled fears, if he is a man. For only fools will strut, and only cowards dare cringe. -- James Warner Bellah, "Spanish Man's Grave" in Reveille, Curtis Publishing, 1947.

"We fight an enemy that never sleeps."

"As our enemies work bit by bit to deconstruct, we must work bit by bit to REconstruct. Be mindful where we should be. Set goals. We fight an enemy that never sleeps. We must learn to sleep less." -- Mike H. at What McAuliffe Said

"The Fate of Unborn Millions. . ."

"The time is now near at hand which must probably determine, whether Americans are to be, Freemen, or Slaves; whether they are to have any property they can call their own; whether their Houses, and Farms, are to be pillaged and destroyed, and they consigned to a State of Wretchedness from which no human efforts will probably deliver them. The fate of unborn Millions will now depend, under God, on the Courage and Conduct of this army-Our cruel and unrelenting Enemy leaves us no choice but a brave resistance, or the most abject submission; that is all we can expect-We have therefore to resolve to conquer or die." -- George Washington to his troops before the Battle of Long Island.

"We will not go gently . . ."

This is no small thing, to restore a republic after it has fallen into corruption. I have studied history for years and I cannot recall it ever happening. It may be that our task is impossible. Yet, if we do not try then how will we know it can't be done? And if we do not try, it most certainly won't be done. The Founders' Republic, and the larger war for western civilization, will be lost.

But I tell you this: We will not go gently into that bloody collectivist good night. Indeed, we will make with our defiance such a sound as ALL history from that day forward will be forced to note, even if they despise us in the writing of it.

And when we are gone, the scattered, free survivors hiding in the ruins of our once-great republic will sing of our deeds in forbidden songs, tending the flickering flame of individual liberty until it bursts forth again, as it must, generations later. We will live forever, like the Spartans at Thermopylae, in sacred memory.

-- Mike Vanderboegh, The Lessons of Mumbai:Death Cults, the "Socialism of Imbeciles" and Refusing to Submit, 1 December 2008

"A common language of resistance . . ."

"Colonial rebellions throughout the modern world have been acts of shared political imagination. Unless unhappy people develop the capacity to trust other unhappy people, protest remains a local affair easily silenced by traditional authority. Usually, however, a moment arrives when large numbers of men and women realize for the first time that they enjoy the support of strangers, ordinary people much like themselves who happen to live in distant places and whom under normal circumstances they would never meet. It is an intoxicating discovery. A common language of resistance suddenly opens to those who are most vulnerable to painful retribution the possibility of creating a new community. As the conviction of solidarity grows, parochial issues and aspirations merge imperceptibly with a compelling national agenda which only a short time before may have been the dream of only a few. For many Americans colonists this moment occurred late in the spring of 1774." -- T.H. Breen, The Marketplace of Revolution: How Consumer Politics Shaped American Independence, Oxford University Press, 2004, p.1.